#incredibly true adventures etc was one of the few low-budget lesbian romcoms of its period that i'd never managed to see

[cantsayidont]

Two movies with actual wlw content:

THE INCREDIBLY TRUE ADVENTURES OF TWO GIRLS IN LOVE (1995): Low-budget lesbian teen romcom, written and directed by Maria Maggenti, about the budding romance between 17-year-old baby butch Randy (Laurel Holloman, who later played Tina on THE L WORD), who works at a gas station and is in danger of not graduating high school, and a rich Black classmate named Evie (Nicole Ari Parker), who drives a $50,000 SUV and reads Walt Whitman. Cute and generally charming, though mostly at a sitcom level, it's most interesting when it contrasts the girls' home lives (Randy lives with her lesbian moms and aunt, while Evie lives with her affluent control freak single mother, played by Stephanie Berry). A somewhat disquieting element is teenage Randy's ongoing on-the-down-low affair with an older married woman (Maggie Moore), a situation that doesn't seem to trouble anyone other than the woman's boorish husband (John Elsen), and which the movie ultimately plays for laughs. CONTAINS LESBIANS? It's a lesbian movie, Bront. VERDICT: Pleasant, inconsequential.

JAGGED MIND (2023): Awkwardly titled, awkwardly realized lesbian thriller about a young Black artist named Billie (Maisie Richardson-Sellers), on the rebound from an emotionally unavailable ex (Rosaline Elbay), who jumps impulsively into a new relationship with a white woman named Alex (Shannon Woodward) despite struggling with debilitating memory problems that result in frequent déjà vu and jarring flashbacks to arguments and even violent incidents that can't have actually happened. (Or can they? Etc.) The editing tricks used to illustrate Bilie's flashbacks are dramatically effective, but the eventual explanation of what's going on is not, involving too big a leap from what's already been established while leaving some important story threads (and character motivations) largely unexplained; the film ends up relying heavily on Richardson-Sellers' looks and charm to paper over an abundance of holes in the plot. Perhaps most interesting as a companion piece to the 2022 movie HEATWAVE, with Kat Graham, another recent thriller about a queer Black heroine falling, at her peril, for a mysterious white woman — an emerging sub-genre of gay cautionary tale? (Of the two, HEATWAVE is better, mostly because while it also falls short, its more modest ambitions keep it from bruising itself quite so badly in the fall.) CONTAINS LESBIANS? Almost exclusively! VERDICT: Good-looking, half-baked.